


Something at Work in the Soul

by Cambusmore, TheFierceBeast



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Deflowering, Dorian has floppy hair, Drug Use, Experience, F/F, First Time, Horror, Innocence, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Repression, Slow Burn, UST, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Victor blushes a lot, Victorian, stiff other things, stiff upper lips, virgin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-08 08:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1933575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambusmore/pseuds/Cambusmore, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFierceBeast/pseuds/TheFierceBeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"No more let Life divide what Death can join together."</em> -Percy Bysshe Shelley</p><p>In which the cruel injustices of Penny Dreadful are corrected, weekly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This will earn its E for sex and violence in time. Hold tight, darklings.

There’s an ice house in London that’ll take anyone’s money. And not too much of it at that, so that maybe, if you’re not too greedy about it, you might be able to pocket some of the master’s unearned shillings without him ever missing them. It’s a wonder the proprietor charges so little, what with his reputation for keeping fine meats and poultry both unspoiled and easy on the eyes. Entire gentry peacocks ascend from the frigid ice house depths proud and intact, except for their still hearts and cloudy eyes. 

Not everything returns from the dead quite so pretty as it was. 

It’s not a spell keeping everything chilled for months on end while the rookeries swelter. There’s a forgotten river down there, built over when it got in the way of London, a ghostly churn and rush all around the weeping brick wall of the cistern. The boys hear it and worry when they go down to retrieve so-and-so’s autumn venison. Some of the local colour call it the Styx, although not a one could tell you why. It’s that river and ice, lots of it, some sold to keep punch cold, but most of it stored until it melts down the drain like the proverbial. 

It costs so dear to bring the ice in from far afield, from Scotland in good years and Norway in bad ones. This year, 1891, is a bad one, so maybe Barrett (& Sons) overlooks a little more than he should. So maybe when the young, cagey cove from a few doors down turns up with a canvas jumble in a wheelbarrow, his eyes red-rimmed and pleading, Barrett, who understands something of the difficulties of life, allows him to see to his goods and their careful dissimulation below on his own. So maybe in return for his compassion, Barrett receives a sum that would buy the silence of an angry mob. So maybe, instead of toasting the ice house’s rates with your ill-gotten peppermint gin, you should really be asking yourself what else is down there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian pays Vanessa a visit, during which he meets her doctor and learns a little more than he bargained for.

“Miss Ives is unwell,” the liveried servant informed him. His hand on the door frame blocked his access and Dorian stared at it for what felt like a long time until he returned his gaze to the man’s face. He smiled, purposefully.

“Yes. That is why I am here.” The man’s expression did not flicker. “I’ve had word that she has asked for me.” That was a lie, but what was a butler to know. Dorian watched him intently, for some clue behind those dark eyes, but there was nothing. “Mr Gray,” Dorian repeated and this time his smile showed teeth.

“Yes, sir.”

He held his bouquet of Dog Roses and Spanish Jasmine before him like a passport, or a shield as he crossed the threshold. The butler, stepping aside, gave him and his flowers a curious hard look and said, “I will announce you to Miss Ives’ doctor, sir.” His gaze was one that knew more than it let on. The man’s face held a strange fascination for him: he felt at once repulsed by and jealous of its peculiar pattern of scarring.

“Thank you,” he said. His footsteps echoed across the entrance hall, the sound of a house not usually silent but plummeted into ill fortune like mourning. He followed the broad red square of the man’s back up the unlit stairway until he melted away into the shadows, clearly having announced nothing. Dorian was compelled to turn a full circle, wondering which room, until a door opened behind him.

 

The room beyond was a sliver of darkness, barely a glimpse of a hint of a bedstead and perhaps a white face before the closing door eclipsed his view and he was left with only an uncomfortably certain impression of wildly staring eyes, which surely his snatched peep hadn’t afforded a real look at. He turned his attention to the man who’d closed the door, and didn’t bother to keep the delight from his voice. “And who are you?”

The man visibly bristled at his admittedly rude introduction. Dorian licked his lips, recovering. “That is, I’m sorry - Miss Ives, you know, I’m terribly concerned for her -”

“We are all concerned for her wellbeing.”

“Of course.” Dorian nodded, and arranged a chastened look, glancing up from beneath his eyelashes to check if it was working. The man’s expression softened, in the face of such practised sweetness. He said,

“Frankenstein. Doctor Victor Frankenstein. Miss Ives is under my care.”

“A pleasure.” He meant it. “Dorian Gray. A good friend of Miss Ives.” The hand he grasped was warm, damp and most reticent for a doctor. He could swear the man flinched at the greeting, before he forced a polite smile.

“Of course. Likewise.”

“And how is she?” He directed his gaze meaningfully towards the door handle. The last time he’d seen Vanessa, she’d been… not quite her usual self, in a way he’d found most fascinating. There had been something about her…

“Mr Gray, I am afraid that Miss Ives is somewhat unwell.”

There was something about this man, too. Dorian allowed himself a brief scrutiny of his subject. Good clothes, old but immaculately kept. Upright - uptight - bearing. A sensitive mouth set determinedly above a firm cleft chin. Something about him arrogant and defeated all at once. And his eyes… delicate hydrangea blue eyes, circled beneath with shadows, shocking in his pale, perspiring face. All this, in a moment. He looked to be either an addict or in deep mourning, and seeing him so neatly dressed, Dorian decided the good doctor must certainly be in love with Vanessa and Vanessa must certainly be very sick indeed.

“May I see her? She is,” he watched Victor’s face, “very dear to me.”

Not a blink. “I’m afraid not. Visitors can excite her, detrimentally. It is, you see, a nervous condition.” Perhaps not love for the lovely Miss Ives, then, who after all had more than her fair share of admirers already. His thoughts alighted, accidentally, on the gruff American he’d fucked on a chaise not a week ago. Such swagger and bluster for his whore in the street - the outcome of the evening had been a pleasurable surprise even for one as hard to surprise as Dorian. Writhing beneath him, brave Mr Chandler had shown something of the animal in him: it was always the ones you least expected. Perhaps even this staid young doctor - what might show beneath should his polished veneer crack, and his-

“-Mr Gray?”

Dorian snapped from his reverie. He must have looked, hard, right into those arresting blue eyes, for Victor’s face coloured, two high rosy spots blooming on his white cheeks - he was blushing! - as if he could guess just from the directness of that look the indelicate thoughts unravelling in Dorian’s mind. “She has had several nervous attacks over the past few days, so I’m afraid I can’t possibly-”

_“Victor?”_

That from inside the room, not weakly at all, but the same old confident Vanessa. A little line appeared between the doctor’s fine dark brows and he glanced towards the door. _“Victor? Who is there?”_

“If you’ll excuse me a moment.”

He nodded, craning subtly to see inside the room, but Victor was slim and slipped quickly through the gap in the doorway. Dorian sighed, tapping one foot, listening to the unintelligible murmur of conversation beyond.

 

Victor didn’t speak, just held the door open and beckoned. Dorian smiled as he stepped through. The good doctor’s demeanor was changed, his gaze fixed on Dorian with unmistakable - curiosity? Not quite. Something _more_.

The window was open a crack, a light wind bulging the curtains inwards like something formless trying to escape a sack of skin - Dorian looked over to where Vanessa was sitting up in bed. The sheets were freshly and obviously changed, a vase of white candytuft already on the nightstand. But no amount of brushing could disguise how lank her black hair hung, neither could the arrangement of the counterpane quite conceal the restraints binding her to the bedframe by her wrists. He swallowed - those restraints put entirely different images into his head - he glanced at Victor, who was looking at Vanessa. She looked terrible, her usual pearly complexion gone a sickly, dull bone, her lips chapped and split and the black voids of her eyes sunken as a week-old corpse’s. A ruin of beauty: Dorian couldn’t help but find it invigorating.

“Mr Gray!” She sounded delighted, “I would take your hand, but-” and she smiled, a ghastly parody of charm.

“Miss Ives. I should have come sooner. How are you feeling?”

“Improved. Doctor, don’t you think I look much improved?” She cast a sly sidelong smile at Victor, who returned it weakly, his eyes flicking all the while to the door as if he couldn’t wait to have their guest out of there. Jittery. Dorian laid his flowers on the bed. Vanessa’s smile remained in place, her eyes glittering glassy as a cobra’s and as hypnotic. “Thank you,” she said, “they’re beautiful - just. But how quickly the beauty fades once a flower is plucked.” Her eyes were on Dorian’s but her smile was elsewhere. From behind them, Victor cleared his throat, loudly. “Dear Victor,” she said, “how does your garden grow?” and Dorian barely managed not to laugh. Even black-lipped and wild she was marvellous, perhaps more so.

“I think that’s enough,” Victor said, “it is bad for you to become overstimulated again, Miss Ives.”

“Bad for me, or bad for you, dear doctor?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mr Gray…” He felt a hand placed on his shoulder - warm even through coat and shirt, yet he shuddered at the touch.

“One moment alone with him.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“One moment alone, pray.”

“Prayer has nothing to do with it.”

Her voice was rising. “A moment’s not long enough for so much as a grope, even you must know that, our sweet blushing doctor-” Victor’s eyes met his, a pure cold hit of desperation. Dorian allowed himself to be led back out into the hall, where the doctor shut the door on her laughter.

 

“I’m sorry for her.” Victor said, and Dorian couldn’t quite tell if that meant he pitied her, or was apologising for her outburst. If he only knew what had gone between them… Dorian licked his lips and with a jolt saw him mirror the gesture. Victor cleared his throat again, but quietly, like a parched man lost in desert. “She spoke about you. Told me things…” Dorian’s heart leapt. “...she said you were to be trusted. You understand that her troubles are not of the body, or even of the mind?” Dorian nodded, feeling his throat tight with - what? Excitement? “They are of the soul.” He looked so tired, the fine bruise-dark skin around his eyes twitching, his tense shoulders slumping a little as if the weight this confession had lifted from them had been a weight of protective armour. Raw, he looked, and Dorian realised he was waiting to see how this information was received.

“What exactly did she tell you about me?”

Such an open face. The opposite to Dorian’s, its look of weary experience hiding a strange innocence. “She told me,” Victor said, “that you seek out knowledge in the darkest as well as the brightest places. That you go amongst thieves and drunks and fallen women and,” his eyes now averted, “sodomites. We are perhaps alike, you and I. In my line of work I come into more knowledge of death than any living man should be party to…” He trailed off, still looking elsewhere and when Dorian laid a gentle hand on his arm, he flinched and jerked away.

“Do not fear. I assure you that, of all men, I am adept at keeping secrets.”

“Thank you. I wonder, that is, Miss Ives said, perhaps you could be of help and recommend a reputable establishment whereby I could procure some opium?”

He was glad that Victor was still looking away, stumbling over his words, so as not to see Dorian’s eyes widen at the very notion of a reputable opium den. “For Miss Ives, you see, for the pain…”

“Of course.” _Of course_. Of _course_ he wasn’t in love with _her_ \- or any _woman_ , he’d wager - of _course_ he was an addict. “Please, tell me what you - she - requires and I will arrange for it.”

“No - thank you, no. I must go myself. An address will be sufficient.”

“An address then, but you must allow me to accompany you, or at least meet you there - these places can be dangerous for the,” he paused a moment, “Uninitiated.” Reaching inside his jacket, he found a Carte de Visite and a pencil. When he passed over the address, he made sure of their fingers touching, just for the briefest second and Victor flinched once more but this time he didn’t jerk away.

“I am grateful,” he said, and when he looked Dorian in the eye once more, Dorian _knew_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In flashback, Victor picks up the pieces, quite literally.

Under ideal circumstances, one would not be on hands and knees, fishing bits of flesh out from between the floorboards. There should be no memories associated with the now inert pair of hands, laying open as if in supplication. One should not drip tears and mucus and saliva all over the subject in great, hiccuping sobs. These particular circumstances were not ideal; they were unprecedented. Before him lay the ruin of the only man ever to die twice, ripped open along the weakest lines of his body. The first anatomist’s incisions had just started to heal with the help of precise suturing. They would be the thinnest silver scars in time, not worthy of comment save from the loosest, cruelest tongues. 

_Would have been_ , he thought and choked again, the sound large in the close silence.

Victor sat back on his heels and tried to breathe. This was like any one of the hundred autopsies he had performed, he reminded himself. There had been worse settings: whorehouses, opium dens, freezing crypts, the kitchen tables of weeping families so destitute they would allow such a thing. He could even let himself feel some regret for the more tragic cases and carry on with his work nonetheless. But this, this was a different species of pain. 

Victor’s fingers were still numb with cold from his enforced stroll with Caliban and he blew shaking breath on them, held them under his arms for a few moments so he could hope to work deftly. Eventually, he reached out and traced an eyebrow, feeling the rough catch of dried blood against his fingertip. This could be a race against the second onset of decay, likely futile, but imparting purpose, a reason to stop crying if anything. Whatever _could_ be done _had_ to be done now.

Eyes intact, but staring, vacant. The branching capillaries burst all over again. Quite unbearable to look at, Victor found. And he had bitten his tongue in surprise. It lay swollen and marred, but likely functional. The saliva that came away on Victor’s fingertips had already gone cold.

_Faster. It’s already too late._

A broken collarbone unset and healed badly. That had annoyed Victor and he had asked him about it, daring to touch the bump to show what he meant, telling himself he was only testing his memory. Proteus had called it a kink and taking Victor’s frown for misunderstanding, he sought a length of old rope abandoned on the dockside and tied it on itself a few times over. 

He shook the knot gently at him, to make himself understood. “Kink, Victor.”

It was a shock to find that Proteus had been a sailor. There were none of the marks of seafaring on his skin, no permanent sunburn over everywhere light could reach, no tattoos of the night sky over the Cape of Good Hope, no scars from ropeburn cut into his palms. Somewhere far North then and not for very long. A whaler, he soon learned, a reluctant one. Had he shed tears for the beasts in his first life as he had in his second? Or had death softened him? Victor felt his own scientific impassivity wavering before all of that uncontained feeling.

He shook his head to clear it, feeling his way past both clavicles and down his sides, averting his eyes from the mess that had been Proteus’s chest. He would save that for last when he might be able to bear it. The stomach was intact and still warm to the touch, the last organ to go cold because it ran hotter than anything else. He thought fleetingly of chestnuts and moved on. An unfortunate lesion on the liver, but he knew from hepatic scars glimpsed from time to time in other corpses that these healed. He couldn’t see the kidneys, a good sign. Tucked in place behind the wall of his abdomen, the looping jumble of his intestines. 

Before he could look at the worst of it, Victor needed something. There was no time, but he let himself remember. 

Proteus had stared at him with a wonder like love, unearned but no less affecting, as a child for a parent. Victor had tried to be his father with mitigated success. Some lessons came backwards. He bought him books before he taught him not to try to catch the candle flame in his hand. He watched him learn not to stare at the sun. So much knowledge gained from pain, but not always. There was the softness of fur and the smell of pies being sold just outside, gentle and pleasant. Victor found that teaching someone about the world was all about sight and touch, sensation. And it was soon, too soon, sometime around when the red cleared from his sclerae and the bottle green of his irises drew all the light in the room, that Victor knew. 

He found reasons to touch him, to fuss over the straight, clean sutures he had wrought from his predecessor’s butchery. He continued to help him eat despite his doing very well on his own. He could disguise overlong looks as scientific observation, not that Proteus complained. He simply watched Victor just as candidly, unimpeded by shame or notions of decorum. Those long unembarrassed looks were not blank stares, they were full of feeling, and it gave Victor the impression that he had just woken up from a kind of death himself. That spark of life he had ranted at Murray about, now he knew what it meant, how it felt. It was not simply an anatomical process. It could take another form, a dawning awareness sloshing in the murky depths of him, as if something was at work in his very soul. 

_Get on with it._

The ribs were broken neatly all down one side, of course, but not smashed: there were no shards to lose in the many recesses of the chest cavity. The sternum was somehow intact. Victor began to breathe more quickly, trying to ignore the feeling skittering across his skin. Lungs damaged, although people who had overcome consumption sometimes lived to old age with only a third of one lung to supply them with air. There was untold dirt in the body now, germs on the murderer’s hands, on Victor’s own, on the floor. And yet... 

Nearly all of it, all of _him_ , could be saved if rot had not yet set in irreversibly. All of him, that is, but his heart. Caliban’s fist had torn through the pericardium and the endocardium, burst into both ventricles, and as Proteus fell, maintained its hold, severing the arteries and anointing all of them in blood. Quite simply, Proteus had no heart left. And nor did Victor.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian meets Victor in a disreputable establishment and they behave disreputably.

His reflection was always so distracting.

Dorian paused on his way out of the club, attention caught by a flicker of movement that he knew came from a great hall mirror, dimly lit. He had a strange relationship with mirrors. Anything too small he mistrusted somehow - their frames made his reflection look too much like a... - no, his image in the glass frowned slightly - too small a frame and the reflected world looks trapped, diminished. His reflection smiled then and, cocking his head and smoothing down his sleek hair with one hand, he wondered how Victor saw him. A friend? His smile widened, dazzling and ingenuous, open youthful face and sweet brown eyes. A fellow innocent, even? He lowered his gaze, bit pensively at the fullness of his lower lip until his own pantomime in the glass made him dissolve into silent, shoulder shaking laughter. No. He was quite sure that was not how the doctor saw him, no matter how adeptly he played his many roles. The rake, perhaps? He looked his reflection directly in the eye and it smirked back, daring him. The shadows around him seemed to shift like drapery and for a moment the tableaux in the mirror resembled again a grand painting. Drawing one elegant hand across his collarbone, down over his chest, Dorian shuddered. His long fingers came to rest on a shirt stud and he pressed it through its buttonhole, examining the results in the glass. Another. His fingertips stroked the fine pale skin of his own chest, his lips parting around a little sigh. It was indecent and it pleased him, but part of him knew that whilst he regularly went about in such deshabille to a polite lack of comment, it wouldn't do to scare his timid quarry. Reluctantly, he did up both studs and the next, too, so that only his collar lay open, framing the bohemian glint of silver chains at his throat. His reflection nodded: preserve the mystery; it would have to do. Besides, if he got his way... He smiled, coyly. He _always_ got his way.

 

Waiting was torment, not least because Dorian was not used to reining in his appetites in this establishment. He lay back on scarlet pillows - their heavy incense only barely masking the sweat of a thousand pleasure-seekers before him - and barely managed to wave away the girls who drifted over to tempt him. His eyes, however wandering, were for the moment on a loftier prize.

When, eventually, that prize blundered, cap in hand, through the dusty damask curtains that separated front from back rooms, Dorian stayed in the shadows to watch a while.

Victor’s usually large eyes were now huge in his white face; bright lamps in the flickering, smoky room. Dorian watched as he stooped to listen to a man in a stained yellow robe, then shook his head, standing straight again. Licked his lips. His hands, white-knuckled, wrung his hat brim as he stood centre-stage to this Hogarthian morality play, staring all about him. Dorian could watch his charming discomfort for hours, but he'd already been waiting long enough. He sat up.

 

“Mr Jones.”

Victor jumped as soon as Dorian called out, evidently recognising his voice immediately, assumed name aside - Dorian felt a little frisson at that - and fell into the charade perfectly. He spoke, however, as if forcing an unnatural volume so that his voice almost cracked as he replied, “Mr Smith.”

It was utterly ridiculous - and Dorian loved it. Nobody in such an establishment cared whose reputation was at stake and doctors, lawyers and policemen alike came and went anonymously for as long as they paid; could Victor really be so delightfully unaware of that? When beckoned, he approached like a schoolboy being called up to recite, still mauling his hat in his twisting fingers. He stopped in front of where Dorian lounged, managing to look as utterly unthreatening as a grown man looming above a prone man could be. Dorian forgot for a moment his decision not to alarm: shifting to one side on his silken couch, he patted the pillows next to him. Victor cleared his throat. “I’d… rather stand, if you don’t mind.”

Dorian covered his smile with the back of his hand. “But, Mr Jones, you’ll find yourself far more comfortable down here with me.”

“Thank you. All the same.”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. The man in the yellow robe hovered in the periphery of his vision. “Very well. We can conduct our conversation from here.” He raised his voice a little more against the muted background hum of the place, “I’m sure that we will discuss nothing of a sensitive nature.”

The piles of pillows sagged as Victor sank down next to him, boot heels scrambling against the rug as he struggled to stay semi-upright. As he maneuvered into a seated position their thighs touched, right along the length, and he jerked back immediately as if Dorian were made of hot coals. “Have you had a pleasant morning, Mr Jones?”

“What?” Victor looked him in the eye for the first time that day and Dorian had a moment to relish how close their faces were, close enough to see the beading sweat on the fine dark stubble of the doctor’s upper lip.

“Your morning? Pleasant, I hope?”

“It - yes, thank you. And yours?” His face wore every sign of confusion at these pleasantries in such a place. And Dorian could small-talk all day.

“Quite diverting, thank you. I attended my club, dined on oh, a _fine_ roast beef, procured a carriage to drive me to Limehouse - to my other club, you know - and now here I am and _Mr Jones_ , why have you brought me here to meet you?”

The startled expression on his face was without price: no trace left of the lurking fierceness that Dorian had noted at Murray’s house when they first met.

“I need,” he all but stammered it, “That is, you said… for Miss…” he tailed off, glancing about him again as if there were spies on every pallet bed.

“Ah yes. But not for dear Vanessa, I think.” Dorian snapped his fingers, knowing without looking when one of the attendants hurried to his side. “Will you?”

Victor’s eyes followed every move intently as the girl pressed the long pipe into his outstretched hand. The porcelain - he afforded himself a glance: painted and gilded exquisitely - felt momentarily cold to his fingers. Not for long, as he held the bowl over the little oil lamp on the low table before them. “Please.”

Victor eyed the slow sweet vapour of smoke that began to curl from the bubbling treacle of resin with something approaching hunger, but he shook his head. “No. That’s not-”

“Not your brand?” Dorian placed the stem of the pipe between his own lips and inhaled. Like inhaling dreams; a magic shortcut to that perfect moment between waking and sleeping, stretching out forever…

“No,” said Victor, tightly. Dorian looked at him through the haze of drifting perfume.

“Morphine?”

He cleared his throat. Quietly, with some of his former steel, said: “Yes.”

“It’s much the same thing.”

“Even so.”

Dorian breathed another lungful. Victor’s blue eyes, watching him, looked so angry that he couldn’t help but start to giggle softly. “The doctor who needs medicine, then refuses it. Why did you really want to come here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

Dorian laughed at that, without really meaning to. “No. You could see me anywhere. We could meet at dinner, at the opera, at home.”

“I wanted to see you,” Dorian became suddenly very aware of the returning pressure of Victor’s thigh, sliding against the snagged scarlet silk beneath them, resting warm and solid against his own, “away from that. Away from…” His eyes spoke what his lips didn’t, or maybe couldn’t. _Away from all that. Away from propriety and normality and people who might know me._ Dorian knew it more surely in that moment than he knew himself. He tipped his head back, letting himself slip a little further until he was almost lying down, and held the pipe out to Victor, who took it then without question. He held it over the lamp, until the resin began to bubble again. His hand shook. He said, “I wanted to know who you truly were, before I…” His eyes closed against the fumes as he breathed in, held it in his lungs like a seasoned user, then exhaled slowly, blissfully, shaping the words in smoke, “risked myself.” The hand supporting him slipped, suddenly, or maybe the sensation took him by surprise and weakened him. Dorian wasn’t fast enough, in his torpor, to catch him, but the cushions were more than soft enough to fall back against. _Maybe not so accustomed after all_. Dorian watched him, their faces close now, _so close_ , Victor breathing fast and low and those burning spots of blush back in his cheeks. “We could go to your house.” It was a question rather than a statement. Dorian moved his hand as if in a dream, traced the soft line of his jaw, ran careful fingertips along the bridge of his nose, across each silky eyebrow in turn. And Victor smiled, gently, against his fingers, but the soft rhythm of his breath told Dorian that he was already fast asleep.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up very soon, thanks for reading this far!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa relishes the quiet of her sickroom and dreams of Mina. A spring-heeled visitor drops by.

Now that a decision had been made, Vanessa felt not the fitful exhaustion of having one’s body worn by a demon and ridden about town, but pure, wholesome weariness. This little prison of hers had gone blessedly quiet and she could hear everything more for the temporary absence of the horrid whispers that plagued her. Her lungs crackled as she exhaled, the sound that had so worried Victor until their talk. There was a fly, big and slow, hurling at the window pane, setting a futile rhythm of buzzing thuds. The clock on the mantelpiece, counting out the time she had left. And underneath all of that, nothing. She huffed a little sigh and stretched with the unaccustomed pleasure of it. Even in her state, she could luxuriate in such quiet.

 

Where did her demon go when it did not torment her? Did it need sleep too? She wondered about it dispassionately, for she had no longer had the strength for hate. Did it have responsibilities, run errands in one of Dante’s circles, check its pocket watch and fly back to wrack her body with spasms and bay in her ears? There were yet more simple, normal noises to discover all around her. Victor and Mr Gray murmured on the other side the closed door, the floor creaking under the carpet as they shifted their weight, sizing each other up for entirely different reasons. Men were as dumb as beasts, she thought. Sometimes she wanted to stuff them like her badgers and voles just to show them what they looked like. She closed her eyes. The fly tried harder and harder to get out. It must have been hurting itself now. Could it even feel pain? The sucking lull of sleep reached for her and she smiled. All her dreams were of Mina.

 

***

 

There was an afternoon in summer, a day so clear that they could see the telltale blur of rain beneath the clouds all the way in distant Hampshire, although their small corner of the world remained alight with sun. Vanessa dreamed of this often, waking and sleeping, never minding the repetition. It was before she had kissed Peter, before Captain Branson and his moustache, before everything.

 

Mina had arranged herself with her watercolours and her best paper at the edge of a copse the Murrays had long stopped cutting for firewood. As the sun moved across the grass, so did they, making sure to leave their stockinged feet in the light to stay warm, but otherwise shaded by a huge willow that felt almost like a tent around them. Mina’s small hands worked diligently with her brush while Vanessa sewed more pages together for her to use. They were preparing a little illustrated book for Vanessa’s neighbour George, a few lines of doggerel and some pretty coloured sketches of his adventures with his pony, Dapple. The girls were too old for this certainly, although they took no small pleasure in the way the young man flushed and stammered when they brought him their little offerings, so that they could not quite stop themselves from continuing. A small cruelty only they knew to be one.

 

“Mina?”

 

“Hmmm?” She did not look up from where she was dabbing George’s waistcoat an unlikely orange. With little water to dilute them, the colours were heavy and bright on the thick paper, and Vanessa took a childish delight in beholding them. Despite the sentiment behind this gift, Mina would make it beautiful or as near to it as she could.

 

“Do you think that perhaps we might... _relent_ with George after this? We shouldn’t be paying such attentions to him after all. He is nearly eighteen now and we…” Mina did look up then, her eyes dazzled from staring so intently at her work, while Vanessa waited for her to blink, for her gaze to fix on her. “We should stop before we are told to, should we not?”

 

“Oh,” Mina frowned and thought before giving Vanessa a broad, untroubled grin. “I hadn’t even thought of him that way, as a _man_ ,” her nose wrinkled in amusement at the word. “Had you?”

 

“What?”

 

“Thought of him that way?”

 

“No.” It was one of those kind untruths that Vanessa found herself telling everyone of late because it was easier than explaining. How to tell Mina that she had not thought of him that way, but that she knew she should have by now and could not quite account for it. She knew all too well what men and women did together and she could not imagine ever wanting to do so herself. Not with George or anyone. Or not like that. Those flashes that crept up on her were too vague to reassure or appall her, just blurs of writhing flesh, sweat, hair tossed over a bare shoulder, knees, fingertips on lips. They left faint unease in their wake, elusive and fleeting.    

 

Mina batted at an insistent bumblebee intent on investigating her scent or the vivid colours on the page. “Van, you’re not worried about what anyone would make of us and George? It is perfectly innocent.” And in that gentle admonition, the suggestion that Vanessa had once again brought such feelings, such vulgar thoughts where they did not belong. _Night and day_ , Lady Murray had once remarked about the girls, but what she had really meant was light and dark. There was no doubt which was meant for Vanessa.

 

“Don’t you think of anyone that way?” she asked, faintly aware of the pleading note in her voice. _Be like me_ , it begged, _want like me_.

 

“Well,” Mina smirked and her eyes crinkled, “you know, sometimes.” And always she sobered after a moment, thoughtful and candid. “I can’t ever tell who it is, you see. I don’t know enough about...about it, so I only think of the bits and pieces I do know.”

 

Vanessa’s heart began to pound with what she was certain was recognition, not awareness of her skin turning hot and cold in turn, flushing. No, not that, never that. It was the thrill of the illicit, talking as they should not, of forbidden topics, so easy to do with happy, gentle Mina. With her, Vanessa felt less herself and for that she wanted to thank God.

 

“But surely you don’t care for George, Van?” Mina began to laugh in earnest then, discarding brush and paper, smothering giggles.

 

“No! Mina honestly, how could you think such a thing? He’s so preposterous with his collars…” the pitch of their laughter rose to shrieks “...and his whiskers!” George’s latest efforts to look the part of a man had been so unexpected and so _wispy_ that Mina had concocted a lost shawl so that they might flee the drawing room and collapse in a helpless, whooping heap just out of view in the front hall. The memory of it had them in tears all over again and when Mina went to brush hers away, she swept orange across her cheek and down to her mouth unawares. Once Vanessa noticed, she could not look away. “You have…” she started and reached for Mina’s face, brushing at the drying colour as gently as she could.

 

“Is there anyone though, Van?” Mina leaned her cheek into Vanessa’s hand, pliant as she took out her handkerchief and worked at the paint in feather-soft swipes.

 

“Peter.”

 

There, on Mina’s face, a tiny, quick wince before she could show surprise instead. Vanessa felt that look more than saw it, a deep and terrifying thrill like crawling to the edge of a cliff and looking over because you cannot be trusted to stand.

 

She laughed again, harsh and short. “Peter? Oh, Van! What’s so wonderful about him?”

 

“You should be happy.” Her hand had stilled on Mina’s cheek. The wind picked up, blowing the short pieces of her hair against the back of Vanessa’s fingers.

 

“And why is that? He is so...so meek.” Mina nearly flung Vanessa’s hand away and began to collect her things as the air around them cooled perceptibly. The storm from Hampshire was on their doorstep.

 

“You should be happy,” Vanessa repeated, trying to keep some of what she was beginning to feel from her voice. “We always said I would marry Peter. Always.”

 

“And do you always do what you’re supposed to?” Mina stood, suddenly and unaccountably furious, the pink in her cheeks stark in the greying light filtering through the willow’s branches.

 

“Why are you angry?” She fought to contain the strange elation rising within her at Mina’s fury.

 

“Why do you like him?”

 

“He is my friend.”

 

“Vanessa, why do you say you like him?”

 

“Because he is weak.” She had said it without thinking. A gust of wind spared her the sound of Mina’s snort of derision, but she saw it in the movement of her throat, in how she rolled her eyes.

 

“And that’s what you want, is it?” Before Vanessa could say yes but mean no, Mina tossed her hair over her shoulder impatiently, a flash of lightning illuminating the gesture. And by the time the groan of thunder shook the ground beneath them, Vanessa knew why she recognised that particular action. It came upon her in fleeting, compelling flashes, these blurs of writhing flesh, sweat, knees, fingertips on a painted cheek, hair tossed over a shoulder…“Hold still,” said Mina quietly then and Vanessa screwed her eyes shut in confusion, feeling Mina step closer and block out the worst of the ever colder wind, “hold still, there’s a bee-”

 

Nothing then a shrill exclamation of pain. When Vanessa opened her eyes, Mina was cradling her right hand against her breast, trembling with the shock of injury. “Let me see.” Vanessa stepped forward and took her hand, stroking it open to look for the sting and plucking it out with a pinch of her nails from where it still pumped venom into Mina’s palm. They stood for some long moments like this, one holding the other’s hand as the rain began to break through their leafy refuge and splatter the image of George in his orange waistcoat.

 

“It throbs,” whined Mina softly, so Vanessa pulled her hand to her mouth slowly enough that she would have time to wrench away if she wished, and kissed the tiny wound just below her third finger. Still Mina stayed and watched. Breathless, terrified, Vanessa touched the tip of her tongue to the sting, tasting salt and the bitter tang of venom.

 

She hadn’t looked at Mina throughout the strange encounter, so that she didn’t know how long he’d been there behind her, whether he’d crept up slowly or appeared a second before. But there had been a curious change in the light, a looming shadow darker than the storm that had made Vanessa glance up. It was difficult to see anything but the piercing red glow of his eyes in the gloom. There was the suggestion of lithe strength under his black cloak and he was large, so large that Mina’s head, restrained against him, did not quite reach the height of his shoulders. A quick flash of lightning and his grey, leering face, distantly familiar as that of a man, but stripped of anything remotely human stuttered into view. Another glinted off his long metal claws, pressed tightly into Mina’s waist, ten little spots of blood already spreading on the bodice of her dress. With a howl, Vanessa sprung belatedly forward, reaching for Mina as the thing, the monster, spat white and blue sparks at her and jumped up, up above her head and into the copse, out of sight.         

 

***

She woke herself up with a whimper and felt the monster’s metallic breath on her, hot and eager, as he hovered above her.

 

“Hello,” it said, like gears grinding.

 

“Get away,” rasped Vanessa, looking all over the room for anyone or anything to help her, unable to move from the bed for the restraints.

 

“No.”

 

“I dreamed of you.”

 

“This is a dream.”

 

“Your ruined my dream. It ended wrong. You took Mina.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Where is she?” screamed Vanessa, struggling vainly against the biting leather.

 

“Over the river Styx.”

 

Vanessa stilled and blinked up at it, silent for a few moments in her bewilderment. “Where is that?” she managed eventually.

 

“Nearby. You know where.”

 

She did. Like she knew her own name, of a certainty. “If you took her, why would you tell me this now?”

 

“I did his bidding, but I can be bought. She says, _please Van_ ,” this last part delivered in Mina’s own voice, echoing and thin, but recognisably hers. At the sound, the fear evaporated from the room.

 

“Vanessa,” it said in its own voice of screeching metal.

 

“Yes?”

 

“It’s coming.” Her vision dimmed and turned pulsing red and black as the familiar chorus of whispers and shrieks filled every silent corner of her mind. Her demon had returned to claim her body and soul for another hour or month or year.   

 

***

She awoke yet again, but this time in too much pain for it even to be a nightmare. The droning buzz of muttered Latin reached her from across the room. How many times had she received extreme unction by now? As if she cared for the forgiveness of the fickle god who had left her to a fate worse than death for a single, simple transgression committed a thousand times over, every hour on every street of the city. As if she needed absolution where she was going. She tried to laugh, but only a sound like sand came out. Not long now. Vanessa smiled, a rictus of death. _Not long now._    

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! More very soon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Victor and Dorian go on a date to the park and Dorian tires of beating about the bush.

Victor always seemed, thought Dorian, to be in the process of rushing to or from somewhere, as if there were always something more urgent to be doing than whatever currently occupied him. There, with the sky a perfect, fragile blue - the sun warm but not yet far enough into the height of summer to be uncomfortable - the greenery around them just waking, it was hard to conceive of any reason to rush. Then again, Dorian had never really felt the need to hurry, himself.

“Good morning, Dr Frankenstein.”

“Good morning, Mr Gray.” Victor fell into step beside him, breathing - as usual, Dorian noted - a little fast and shallow. He pondered the reasons for this momentarily - the aforementioned rushing; habitual morphine use; or maybe something else was dilating his pupils and quickening his heart - until Victor got his wind back and said, “Could you not have suggested meeting somewhere a little less… public?”

Dorian cast him a sidelong glance, but he was looking away, his shoulders stiff and hands clasped determinedly behind his back. “Perhaps. But I thought the fresh air might serve to invigorate you. As I recall, the last time we met in private, you fell quite asleep, just as events were taking an interesting turn.” He watched for the inevitable blush, but Victor merely cleared his throat, briskly. Dorian couldn’t restrain a smile. _He’d just have to try harder._ “When you lay down so suddenly beside me, I was certain that you were going to kiss me.”

The noise Victor made at that was more like a puppy that had eaten too quickly. He said, “Mr Gray, you are improper.” Then looked all about him at the sunlit promenade of innocent pleasure seekers as if worried he’d spoken too loudly.

“But doctor, you told me that you delight in impropriety.”

Victor looked at him properly for the first time that morning, his eyes narrowed. “I did no such thing.”

“Perhaps I was mistaken… opium does play tricks on one so.”

“Lower your voice, please.” He sounded quiet but steady - one might almost say deadly. He looked around, licked his lips, perhaps nervously and said, even more hushed, “Could we perhaps go back to your rooms instead?”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. Waved away a droning insect with one hand. Around them, the world kept turning, whilst the strait laced Victor Frankenstein fairly pleaded for a private audience. “Dearest doctor, so eager - so _forward_.” Dorian nodded politely to a couple passing them on the wide path, whilst he kept on talking, “I could almost fancy that you are trying to get me alone to have your carnal way with me.”

“Quieter, I must insist-”

“Oh,” Dorian made an impatient gesture, “these unimaginative cattle could care less. That man, for example - does he not look like a criminal character to you? Forgery, I think, or embezzlement perhaps - certainly not possessed of looks that would merit extramarital scandal.”

“Curb your tongue!” Victor hissed. He was starting to look decidedly jumpy, turning this way and that to see if anyone was listening and Dorian was quite warming to his subject.

“That beauty in the green taffeta, however - whose pleasure do you think she attended last night? Her huband’s? I doubt it. She looks the sort to favour sailors, don’t you think?”

“Someone will hear!”

“But it delights me so to see your blushes.” Victor was blushing, now, and it did delight him - the man’s discomfort made his head spin more deliciously than the pipe they’d shared in that Limehouse rookery had. He lowered his voice to a purr. “You must know by now how dearly I desire to fuck you.”

Victor emitted a sudden surprised sound like he was choking, but at the same time he drew closer - to ensure they weren’t overheard maybe - and his urgent hiss was near desperate. “Stop this.”

“But it’s such a wonderful game.”

“This isn’t…” he ran a hand across his eyes, “Gray, this isn’t a game.”

“Then what is it, tell me?” It was Dorian’s turn to lower his voice, stalling Victor with a firm hand on his arm. “You cause me to meet you at a backstreet poppy house then behave like you wish to run, speak of dissolution and depravity then purse your lips like a schoolmistress when I answer in kind, all but implore to be alone with me then push me away. You say there’s something you have that I want, something I have that you need, but you won’t tell me what. Dear doctor, I’m a patient man, but you madden me.”

“You’re still here.”

“You fascinate me.”

“I want you-”

“-yes-” Dorian interrupted him. Face to face now, Victor caught his lower lip between his teeth. Tried to continue,

“-to understand-”

“I _understand_.” His voice was barely a honeyed murmur against Victor’s ear. “I _understand_ that I want to open your eyes to every nuance of every gratification that flesh has to offer, I want to be your lover, your teacher, your guide, your companion in exploring the darkest corridors of your soul, I want to unpick your seams and spread you out and remake you in the image of my desires until you are ruined to anyone but me - know me, Victor, I won’t compromise, I won’t share a thing I crave - I will possess you absolutely in every place and every position until you are wide open and begging me and delirious with pleasure-”

“Oh God.” It was barely a whisper and he leaned in as if he might fall. That one helpless utterance was intoxicating. They were so close now, too close in the bright unremitting daylight, but nobody was looking. Victor’s eyes were shut and as Dorian slipped a hand down between their two bodies and between Victor’s legs, he drew his breath in a gasp, let out a tiny whimper.

“And I think that you want that too.”  But Dorian's adept fingers gently squeezed only softness. Victor’s eyes opened in what might be shock, and they were imploring.

“Please... I can't, not here.”

The drugs perhaps, or the dear doctor had more issues than Dorian had realised, but that only steeled his determination. As if reading his mind, Victor said, “I'll give you what you desire.” Dorian had discreetly removed his hand at the first protest, but they were still face to face and he could feel him, shaking, his breath coming rapid and short, but a brave spark in his eyes. “You can give me what I need, and I have... well, that is, Miss Ives said, and you... I know...”

“ _Miss Ives said_. Miss Ives said _what_? I can give you something you need? _Opium_? You would bargain your innocence for mere narcotics? I hardly think so.” His words were hard, but his voice was soft. Victor said nothing but his eyes in reply were grave and nervous. “My dear Victor there is something you are not telling me.”

“Some secrets are too dangerous to share.”

Dorian choked back a laugh. “You talk to _me_ of danger, of secrets? Oh, my dear, you have no idea who you are dealing with.” He lowered his voice. “I _will_ have you…”

Victor coloured, prettily. “My body, perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

He lowered his eyes. “Yes. You will…” His discomfort was palpable, “... _have me_. But the body is only the vessel for the soul, Mr Gray.”

“Look at me. _Look_.” He longed to reach out and tilt Victor’s chin to make him comply, but he restrained his hand. “I think that you are beginning to know me. Virtue interests me only in that I can spoil it.”

“Then Miss Ives was correct. One more meeting, and I will explain everything to you. Tomorrow, prepare for me to visit you at home. And you shall take me to your bed, I promise you that.”

It was what made him so compelling: even in the act of making vows such as this, even as he shook with diffidence, the struggle inside him plain to read, Victor Frankenstein still yet retained an icy aloofness that Dorian longed to melt. He stroked one thumb swiftly and lightly down the palm of Victor’s hand that hung limply by his side. A gesture so subtle nobody could notice; the physical response it provoked so slight also, yet so potent. He said, conversationally, “I _will_ have you, and you _will_ want me. I promise _you_ that.”

“Promises can be as dangerous as secrets, Mr Gray.”

“Dorian.” He corrected.

“Dorian,” Victor repeated. And his cold eyes blazed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caliban grows impatient and persuasive in the face of Victor's defiance.

He lay in wait with predatory patience, having stalked through East London like a single-minded animal, trading rookery for woodland. Whatever humanity there was in him ebbed as he fixed all of his skill and feeling on the hunt for Frankenstein. No, Caliban thought, I am a man. I am strong and I can hurt and I can feel. But so could any beast, he knew. 

The rain continued to drive hard and brittle against the window panes, high in the wall of the familiar cellar. This sort of bleary light rendered him almost ordinary in the streets, everyone else’s face just as grey as his, leached of colour by the gloom, their lips and cheeks and eyes all dark. The storm, that great equaliser. There would be no hackney cabs to be had in this downpour; Frankenstein almost certainly fought his way home against the crowds and the rain at that very moment, jolted and jostled as he went. Caliban’s black mouth stretched and curled into a smirk. As steadfastly as he had insisted, all indignation and righteous fury, that he sought not his suffering but his assistance, he could scarce disguise to himself that any tragedy that befell Frankenstein gave him immense and immediate gratification. Nothing too small, not even some inclement weather, went unappreciated. 

The scarred oak door clattered open then, letting in a gust of harbour stench and splattering rain, and the small black-clad form of his creator, his coat tails whirling behind him like black wings beating. Caliban withdrew to the swath of shadow cut by one of the room’s pillars, allowing Frankenstein to begin to feel at ease with his notes and his memories, to calm from his always-fraught interactions with the outside world and its denizens. When he would warm and still and sigh, that is when Caliban would show himself and remind him that they were inseparable as the janus. Then Frankenstein’s contempt would show all the more for the contrast. Placidity to hate in a moment, in the space of time it took for him to remember that Caliban existed. 

But what’s this? Frankenstein did not follow the expected routine of defeated idiosyncrasies that Caliban relished - no squeezing his eyes shut and dropping his chin to his chest, no sigh and certainly not the occasional catch of breath that might herald tears. Instead, he continued to move with the momentum of his arrival, breathless with exertion and something else, high sentiment showing in the high colour on his cheeks...Caliban sucked in a breath of surprise and Frankenstein stopped his progress about the room, holding his notes in one hand and a jar in the other, his coat deflating around him. 

“I know you’re there,” he said and Caliban’s guts lurched in surprise, but he recovered immediately and stepped out of the shadows.

“If you are aware of my presence, it is because I allow it,” he spat back.

“You meant to do that, did you?” Frankenstein still hadn’t even looked at him, moving about the room in an unfocused haste, picking up scraps of paper and dismissing them quickly, looking for something. 

“Yes,” insisted Caliban.

A short puff of air from his nose, the ghost of laughter. Frankenstein dared scoff. Had he already forgotten Caliban’s strength, his power? Clearly he needed reminding. Caliban crossed the distance between them and slapped the jar and bits of paper out of his hands, the glass smashing and crunching underfoot as he steered him by the throat to the closest pillar and hoisted him bodily against it. “When I say I mean a thing, I do,” his lips barely moved as he spoke, his jaw clenched so tight against all the fury and hate he felt, “father.” Frankenstein’s legs churned uselessly against him, trying to kick. While it did not hurt him in the least, Caliban did not like to see him any less than utterly subdued and pliant. He brought his knee up between the doctor’s legs slowly and began to press hard until the pain bled all the defiance from him, only large blue eyes open-wide and pleading left to show for it.

“Let me down,” he got out, with difficulty.

“Have you forgotten that you are charged with a task?”

“No.”

“I weary of waiting.”

Frankenstein’s throat worked, yet only strangled clicks got past it as Caliban squeezed more and harder, simply for the satisfaction of watching those eyes suffuse with panic. When he started to change colour and wheeze a moment later, he loosened his grip.

“Do you imagine that the corpses of suitable women fall from the sky? Do you believe they are offered to me left and right and that I refuse them?” His tone remained far too combative for Caliban’s taste and he slammed his head up against the pillar in warning. Nothing for a moment, then he swallowed and whispered, “And do you think for one moment that I would delay being rid of you?” Still Caliban could not help the slight sting of rejection from those words, although the hurt was lined with the satisfaction of knowing that they strove for the same outcome, although it meant freedom for one and love for the other. 

“So you are trying then?” Caliban asked and felt the movement of Frankenstein’s throat as he hesitated. 

“There is someone...it is an awkward situation. She is ailing, but attached to someone in my circles. I cannot enquire too eagerly after her health.”

“You are a doctor.”

“Yes, but don’t forget that I am supposed to help people and not wait for them to die.”

“Did you help me, father?”

“Would you prefer to be dead? Because I would be glad to oblige you!” Cross again, more annoyed by Caliban now than afraid. 

Quietly, almost reluctantly, he asked, “Is she beautiful?”

“She draws admirers even in ill health,” he replied.

“You have not answered me.”

Frankenstein shrugged, infuriatingly.

“Is. She. Beautiful?”

“I know nothing of the beauty of women.”

Ah, _there_ : an admission, rather more than he meant to divulge, no doubt. Awareness dawned in Caliban’s anger-fogged mind and nearly a week of hints dropped began to add up to a secret. His outsized grief and the morphine, the tears that sometimes welled and clung on to his eyelashes, but never fell. And just today, the breathlessness and the flushed cheeks, the insinuating man in Hyde Park with Frankenstein, the one who had walked and stood too close to him before Caliban had to tear himself away and hurry back before the storm broke and the doctor saw him. 

Caliban dropped his voice and moved to speak, so close to Frankenstein that his features became indistinct, save for a sense of vivid blue and white and pink. “I told you I would take from you everything you love. And that for which you lust. Do you wish to see that man from the park torn in half as was my little brother?”

Frankenstein’s eyes ticked to the stain on the floorboards and back to Caliban’s face. “You wouldn’t.”

“But you know that I would.”

“You have no right to anyone! You are entitled to no one, none of us are. Just kill me and have done with it, but no one else.” It was astounding that there was any fight left in him, but here it had appeared again, an annoyance and an obstacle.

“I would not presume to act as your god.”

“Taking everything but my life is the act of a jealous, vengeful god. Demanding a mate is the same. You are owed nothing!”

“If you insist on calling me your god, know that I will not give, I will only take away. I will kill that narrow-faced man that you love if you do not make me your offering!” Caliban shook Frankenstein as he shouted, compelling him to understand the legitimacy of the threat with a little violence.

“Not him.” The begging note had returned; he was afraid again.

“How quickly you move on.”

“It isn’t...I haven’t.”

“I will make you watch as I break him open with my bare hands,” Caliban ground out past his clenched teeth, punctuating the last three words with a sharp knock of Frankenstein’s head against the pillar.

“Please, not him! I beg you. Patience still. A few more days and the illness will take her. I will go to check on her in the morning. Please, do not hurt him.” And he whispered the last, “I need him.”

“And I need her.”

“You shall have her if you can only wait a few hours more.”

“No longer, father, no longer than that.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Victor sees Vanessa off on an important journey.

“Ethan tells me that it was your idea to restrain me. To keep me from hurting myself. At least,” her voice seemed to retreat, even further, “I think it was Ethan.”

Victor glanced over his shoulder. At the movement of his hands on the curtains she winced, pressing her fragile frame further into the flattened pillow. He closed the curtains again, obliterating the thin sliver of daylight he’d briefly allowed into the room, and he crossed to sit at her side.

“My apologies, Miss Ives.”

“Don’t apologise. I owe you thanks. Not for _my_ safety, but even so...”

“I meant, for the light.”

“Oh.” In the pervasive sickroom gloom her face looked little more than a skull, the black sockets beneath her brows devoid even of the flame of possession. “Another discreet examination doctor? Will you gaze into my eyes again?”

Victor smiled. “That won't be necessary. But I will check your heart. Such as it is.” Her hands worked weakly in their bonds as if she would  like to be of assistance and he smiled again, in a manner he hoped was comforting, as he carefully parted the neckline of her gown. Even in the dim light her ribs stood out above the modest swell of her breast, the visible flutter of her heart like a guttering candle flame. He poised the stethoscope, then, remembering, withdrew and blew on it before placing it, a little warmer, against her icy skin. The tick of her heartbeat sounded in his head, low and slow as one just starting, or one weakening to silence.

Vanessa laughed, softly. “What is it saying?”

“It's hard to tell. It's already far away.”

She twisted in her ropes as if attempting to stretch and the black iron bedstead, loosened from so much anguished shaking, let out a creak like grinding machinery. “Far away, across the river. A faintly beating drum.” She smiled, wistfully, as he brushed her dry hair back from her forehead more gently than squeezing any trigger. “For all your efforts, you may have to let me go.”

“You’ll find your way home.”

“I know I will. I have a guide.” He looked at her, but her smile then was not directed his way. She said, brightly, “And how are you finding our Mr Gray?”

Looking up from his bag, Victor raised a sardonic eyebrow. “He's charming.”

“Ah. I knew he'd be the perfect man to fulfill your needs. We can't have you a blushing virgin forever.”

“Miss Ives, please.” But he was smiling, accustomed to her.

She rocked her head slowly against the pillows, and she sighed. “Oh, but aren't we all entangled, our little group of damned souls. Victor, dear - call me Vanessa, now, surely. After what has gone by and what is to come.”

He nodded. “Are you certain about this?”

“Oh yes.” Her eyes slipped closed, her black lips curling. “I like you.”

Victor allowed himself a humourless chuckle. She continued, “Well, I do like you. But in helping you, dear doctor I help myself.” A quiet laugh turned into a cough, “Isn't that the way of things?” Spare pillows leaned against the bed and he picked one up, slipping it behind her back in a fruitless effort to make her comfortable.

“Quite.” He realised that he still had an edge of the blankets in a white-knuckled grip which he couldn’t seem to release. “Just one last thing…”

“A last request. Of course.”

“How did you know?” He met her blank black gaze. “About me.”

“About you-?” Of course, she knew what he meant. She just wanted him to say it. He gritted the stammer from his reply.

“My… _predicament_. My… _needs_. How did you know about Gray, his… _situation_?”

“When I…” Vanessa drew as deep a breath as it seemed her rattling lungs would allow. “... _go away_ , it tells me things. Shows me. Blasted tableaux, proof of the corruption at the heart of every man, that when I wake - when I am myself again, such as that is - seem no more than dreams. But of course then, I know.” The darkness of her eyes seemed to go much deeper than inside her head, her soul - he forced himself not to look away. Her voice hissed, gasping for air. “It is poison. I feel it now, the serpent coiled around my heart, squeezing - the knowledge it gives is worse than the control it takes. I have asked all of you, over and over - let me die. Let me go where it cannot follow…” Her eyes closed abruptly and Victor shuddered, or perhaps shook himself.

He said, “Then shall we?”

“Of course.” She sounded far, far past exhausted, but there was a slight edge of relief to her voice, like a traveller many months on the road who can at long last espy their destination. “You're sure?”

“Positively so.”

Victor swallowed. There was a nervous lump in his throat that he felt certain he’d choke on. Moving from his chair to sit on the edge of her mattress, the bed once again emitted a metallic groan that sounded, irrationally, impatient. Her eyes were closed again, the rise and fall of her chest barely perceptible. From somewhere emanated a strengthening scent of lilies, although they’d long since stopped placing flowers in the room. Victor drew a deep breath. Within the pit of his stomach a curious feeling was stirring, something not dissimilar to excitement. He leaned forward and placed a kiss on the top of her head, watched her face soften into a smile, before he covered it with a pillow. “Goodbye then, for the moment,” he said. She didn’t struggle. She didn’t even move. “Vanessa.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: another Proteus flashback. Thank you for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In flashback, Victor explains dreams to Proteus, with difficulty.

Proteus usually quieted after a whimper or two in the echoing gloom. He feared the darkness, but it acted as a curtain over a songbird’s cage, so that he slept promptly when it fell. Yet every night, Victor lay down, cold and uncomfortable on his makeshift bedding across the attic, and waited, waited for Proteus’s breathing to slow and deepen, waited for the ache within himself to subside, even if it never did. He fell asleep tormented by his soul and awoke tormented by his body, but still he watched. One trying night apart had proven that proximity did not help or hinder; as Proteus’ wailing had faded into exhaustion, the lonely keening in Victor’s mind had not. Why stay away if it did no good? At school, the masters had locked them in the dormitories at night and boys like Victor had quickly learned to dissimulate or feign sleep. Here, with him, he needn’t pretend or avert his gaze and so he did not; life was too long for such thwarted, harmless want. Or so he thought. 

 

That last night began as any other, Proteus struggling into his nightshirt and chattering happily about everything he had done and seen from the grimy window, asking Victor about the things he didn’t understand, which were fewer and fewer with each passing day. There would come a time very soon when he would want to leave and live. Yet for now, he remained content to have Victor as the boundaries of his world, friend, father and god at once. Tomorrow, they would push through the heavy cellar doors and behold everything all at once so that even East London would dazzle with its squalid, vital beauty. But not now, not tonight. 

 

The shouts seeped into his reverie, hollow as echoes, but gaining volume. Victor registered first the sound of them, the dread they imparted and then dimly, slow as drowning, what they meant. He remained nonetheless trapped between sleep and wakefulness, eyes open and limbs frozen, as shadows lengthened into strange shapes in the familiar room. Proteus keened across the way and he could not get to him, could not even move save a few futile twitches, as things, the most mundane things, like his coat on a hook, filled and billowed with sinister promise. Then, in a flash of light at the window, the outline of a huge man, lost immediately to the dark again, although the movement of the sash sliding up was not. Nor was the dark shape, blacker still than the Limehouse night around it, pouring through the opening, down the wall, around Proteus and inexorably towards Victor. Just as the teeming mass began to stretch and resolve itself into the shape of a crawling man, just as a pair of round red eyes blinked into view and metal claws sparked against each other and reached for him, Victor finally woke, snapping upright so abruptly that his lungs seized. Some desperate gulps of breath and he clambered down the steps on his hands and knees towards Proteus, still shouting in strident anguish just a few paces beyond. It should have taken seconds to make his way to him, but Victor shook and gasped and slipped from the sweat on his palms until it felt like days. 

 

“Shhh shhhh, Proteus. It’s alright. Just a nightmare,” he murmured as he finally dragged himself to his side, knowing himself how little comfort the words imparted. 

 

Proteus made a sound then, somewhere between choking and revelation, and reached up to grab the loose bow of Victor’s nightshirt and for the briefest moment, Victor thought he might try to kill him. But not so, he was pulling Victor down to him, sobbing his name, darting panicked hands across his face and in his hair as if trying to see in the dark with his fingertips. Belatedly, after the shock of Proteus’ desperation and his momentary capitulation to his own passed, Victor jerked back, away from the bump of Proteus’ nose against his cheek, the hot wet of his tears at his temple, the heat of his distress. Hands sought fervently in the dark until Victor caught one and squeezed, “Hush now, hush.”

 

“Victor,” he gulped, tried to breathe first and then speak, so inarticulate and helpless in his panic that Victor nearly gave in to the sudden stab of unacknowledged sentiment twisting up inside him by lying down. He sat back on his heels instead. “Victor, you...You were gone, not here…” His throat worked, heard but unseen in the dark.

 

“I’m here now. I was just across the room. Remember? Over there,” and he arranged Proteus’ fingers to point in the direction of his pallet.

 

“No!” Proteus brought their clasped hands down hard against the floor to punctuate the denial. “Not there...I _know_ that! You...He came and took you and then you were gone and not there,” gesturing to Victor’s bed, “not...not anywhere.”

 

“Who took me?”

 

Proteus turned away whimpering and try as he might to coax him with the gentle fingers of his free hand, Victor could not compel him to turn back. So then he did lay down at his side. 

 

“Who took me?” he repeated, looking up at the ceiling, ignoring the heat of the arm against his own.

 

“A man...a...ghost? No...a _monster_.” 

 

“There are no such things as monsters,” Victor said and closed his eyes.

 

“His eyes were red. Like small bright fires.” The poetry borne from his necessary economy of words never failed to affect Victor, but this instance prompted a lurch of disquiet inside him. How was it that they had seen the same thing in the dark? How could they share dreams? The slick of sweat on his skin cooled abruptly and he began to shiver. “And he took you up,” Victor’s hand was lifted towards the high window, “away, and now...where is he now? Where did he go?” 

 

“It was a dream. Do you remember those? They aren’t always bad like this, sometimes they are very nice.” When Proteus did not speak, Victor listened to his even breathing and attempted to formulate a few words that wouldn’t prove unduly alarming. How to explain such notions to a man? Children learned these things as they grew older, accepted them as they occurred. This was different and very difficult. “At night, when we sleep, stories come back and play in our minds. They are made up of all sorts of elements: memories, fairytales, fears, wants-” He cleared his throat. “They can be events that have happened or have not, and they are often fantastical.”

 

“Fan-?”

 

“Fantastical. It means strange or even impossible. You can fly in dreams, even though we can’t when we are awake. You can have that which your heart desires.” 

 

“Like what?” 

 

“Like sweets or riches,” he supplied lamely. 

 

“You gone is not what I want.”

 

The quiet stretched a little too long. “That was a nightmare, it’s different.”

 

“Why, Victor?”

 

“Because just as our mind can send us pleasure in our sleep, it can also send us fear. It is mercifully less common. But your brain will divulge what it is most afraid of, like a secret, and your dreams may use it against you.” Proteus made another forlorn sound and turned to Victor, so that his whiskers prickled at his throat. Victor waited until he could continue, “It is never true. It never comes to pass. Do you understand? Dreams are not magic. Do you hear?”

 

“Yes,” a puff of warm, tear-thickened breath against his freezing skin.

 

Victor edged away from the mouth on his neck. He was forgetting his own rituals of contact, his little ways of bearing the proximity, such as not touching him for the sake of it, not smelling his skin.

 

“Do you think you can sleep now, Proteus?” And not saying his name unless strictly necessary.

 

“Mmmm,” drowsily, already distant.

 

“That creature was not real, it dies with the night. Every night.” The grip of Proteus’s large hand on Victor’s slackened. “It wasn’t real.” _It was._ “There are no monsters.” _There were._ “We will never be apart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far! Things are happening...


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dorian invites Victor over for hot sex, I mean, afternoon tea.

He wouldn’t admit it but he had been listening for the sound of carriage wheels for the past hour when the knock sounded on his front door. Dorian glanced at the long case clock at precisely the second it began to chime four. He smiled.

No cab, then, but the fact that Victor had arrived on foot was certainly no more irregular than Dorian opening the door himself. His staff were quite used to unscheduled days off, but Victor - even after their previous encounters - still managed to look a little offended as Dorian stepped back and waved an arm to bid him enter.

“Dead on four, doctor.”

“That was the time you stipulated.”

“Yes, of course.” The hallway had never appeared so lofty before it had Victor standing central, managing to look quite isolated even in his present welcoming - more than welcoming - company. The man alone. Clinging, like to a rock at sea, to his- “Ah. May I take your..?” Dorian raised his eyebrows meaningfully at the Gladstone bag at Victor’s side and Victor glanced down as if he’d forgotten he’d been holding it, drawing it even closer to him.

“I do apologise, I came straight from…”

“No, doctor - Victor - it’s alright.”

Victor returned his offered sweet smile and he felt the little thrill of it. _Happening, finally. The hunt, the close, the kill._

“Your staff is smaller than I expected.”

That drew a delighted little laugh from him, which earned in its turn another shy smile. “I thought we should have some privacy. Was that presumptuous of me?”

“Yes.” Victor hefted the padded handle of his bag, but didn’t put it down. “But thank you.”

_Wonderful_. Here, with no onlookers, Victor finally held his gaze. Dorian took a step towards him, slow and unrushed, and he did not back away, although he noted the telltale bob of his throat around a hard swallow.

“You’re nervous.”

“Yes.”

Dorian caught his bottom lip between his teeth, just for a fraction of a second before he checked his behaviour. A crucial juncture; he must play carefully. “Please don’t be. I promise you that tea was prepared before I dismissed the household; you are at no risk from sandwiches crafted by my inexpert hands.”

_Perfect_. He congratulated himself when Victor’s eyes slid shut above a genuine smile, almost a laugh, and his shoulders dropped a little.

When he opened his eyes, Dorian was a few steps closer, looking right into them, and Victor said, “I can’t imagine that your hands are in any way inexpert,” with such a stare that Dorian couldn’t quite trust what he was hearing and cleared his throat, directing a smile at the polished marble of the floor.

“The dining room is through this way.”

“Would you mind if I - refreshed myself, first?”

“No, of course.” He longed to touch him, to reach out just one hand and take his hand and test this tenuous bond, but - he nodded, tightly. “Up the stairs. Follow the corridor to your right until you come to the end door.” He watched Victor ascend, still clad in his overcoat and clutching his bag as a child clings to its nurse’s skirts. He watched until he rounded the corner at the top of the curved staircase, and then he turned away.

A quick check of his appearance in the grand mirror that dominated a wall of the room; behind him, myriad painted eyes glared balefully from a gloom that was unusual in late- afternoon London even for the season. He met them, reflected in the glass, his own eyes looking no more alive, no more filled with humanity. Turning left, then right, jacketless, he adjusted his scarlet silk shirt, the heavy decorative chains around his neck. He angled sideways, craning for a back view, smoothing his hair back into place as it fell across his graceful brows. When the clock struck half past the hour he was snapped from his distraction: Victor was taking an awfully long time.

The house seemed more silent than ever, not even a creak of floorboards as he carefully climbed the stairs. He wasn’t quite sure why he was taking pains over such stealth: perhaps something in the back of his mind really did have him convinced that Victor would be the first person to ever run off on him, and this stealth might catch him in the act. Although it wouldn’t be so much the act that would sting: it would be the intent. Never having experienced rejection, Dorian didn’t want to start now and the threat of it made him burn for the object of his fire even more.

Half way along the corridor he paused, feet silent on the Karabagh carpet runner. _He reaches the bathroom, and then what? He knocks?_ His moment’s hesitation was enough to notice, from the corner of his eye, movement through the open door by his side. Victor standing there, in the half light, almost hidden by the bed drapes.

They both spoke at the same time: “I’m sorry, I-” “I wondered where you-” then tripped on one another’s wordy apologies. He was, Dorian noted, in shirt sleeves now, his coat laid aside somewhere, the buttons of his stuffy woollen waistcoat undone and even his tie and collar off. When Dorian stepped into the room with its heavy velvet curtains pulled shut and closed the door softly behind him, the light dimmed even further. Victor seemed, quite truly, a creature of the half-light, to be learnt by slow increments.

“I hope that you don’t mind.”

Dorian’s gaze flicked towards the ante-room door, still shut tight, and then back to his companion. He studied his face, his bright eyes cast in deep shadow. “I do not.”

Victor placed one hand upon the bed post at his side. Dorian watched it slide, perhaps absently, up and down the smoothly turned wood.

“The door was ajar.” He nodded, towards the dark wall opposite the foot of the bed. “Are they family?”

“The paintings?”

“Yes.”

“No. None of them.”

Victor tilted his head to one side, a curiously beguiling gesture that Dorian had not noticed on him before. “But they mean something to you.”

“I find them beautiful. That’s meaning enough.”

“Beautiful.” Victor made a quiet disbelieving sound. He gestured with his head to one image, of dogs pulling apart a baying stag. “This?”

“Of course. There is beauty in death, do you not think, doctor?”

“No.” His voice was low and firm.

Dorian took another step towards him, disguising his advance with consideration of the picture. “As a man of science, surely you can appreciate the beauty of death more than most.”

“As a man of science, I see more of its horror than most.”

In the dim light, the hunting scene was picked out only in highlights: the sun rays through the trees, the whites of the hunted beast’s rolling eyes. The stain of blood was a dark mystery. “What, then, is beautiful to you?”

“Overcoming death.” He turned suddenly, and Dorian felt the weight of his gaze and wondered on the innate ability of men to gravitate to that which their inner hearts most desire.

“An affirmation of life? But surely the most beautiful thing about life,” he couldn’t keep the wistfulness from his tone, “is its transience? Its…” he half reached out, eyes fixed on Victor’s pale wrist, hand still resting on the bedpost, “fragility?”

“You speak like you long for death.”

“Perhaps.”

“And you say that because you are young.” Dorian didn’t reply, but his amused smile was difficult to stifle. Victor said, “Have a care: one day you may get everything you desire.”

“And what is it that you desire? Victor?”

A play of emotions flitted across his shadowed face, his dark eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “I… said,” his voice was thick. “Life…”

Dorian leaned in closer. The air between them seemed to buzz, raising the fine hairs on his forearms. “I want to hear it. Tell me.”

His voice was strangled. He choked out, once more, “Life…” then raised a hand, placed it against Dorian’s chest. “You…” and Dorian clasped that hand to him and drew him in and crushed their lips together with the violent ecstasy of a dam breaking.

 

He held him, close, but he - not _struggled_ , not exactly, but moaned into his mouth and broke away frequently, gasping, only to return to kissing him once again, like someone not at all practiced in physical pursuits. The thought pleased Dorian immeasurably. Of course, he’d had more than his share of virgins, but none quite so hard won as the brilliant beauty now urging him backwards to the bed.

His fingers worked on Victor’s shirt buttons, hands spreading pressed linen, slipping nimbly beneath to feel the fever heat of him, the unexpected burr of chest hair. One thumb stroked a nipple that hardened instantly at his touch, but Victor whimpered against his lips then, pulling his hands away by the wrists, placing them at Dorian’s own shirt front instead.

Dorian paused a moment to watch him. A moment’s image that he was certain would stay with him always: his clothes in disarray, shirt open to the waist and tugged half out of his trousers, eyes wide and pale cheeks flushed, lips parted, gasping for air so strenuously that Dorian could see even in the gloom the frantic tick of his pulse beating in his throat. Victor swallowed, hard. He placed his hands over Dorian’s and began to unbutton his shirt. After the first two, he pushed him gently backwards, to sit on the silk counterpane.

Dorian smiled. “Tell me.” But Victor just shook his head, frowning, while Dorian purposefully ignored his clear gestures. “I’ll do anything you want. But you have to ask for it.”

“I need you to…”

“What?” Dorian tipped his head back, exposing the curve of his throat. He thumbed open another button. Trailed his hand down towards his waistband. “Anything.” A whisper. “I’m yours. Ruin me…”

Victor’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth, released it, closed his eyes and breathed deep and said, “I need you to pretend.”

Dorian’s hand stalled in its stroking. He tipped his head to one side, a sudden, stronger tug of arousal surprising him. “Yes..?”

“Please…” His voice was low, shaky with excited emotion that he was clearly attempting to rein in. “Please, Mr Gray, if you would be so kind as to remove your clothes and lie on the bed.”

“Yes, doctor.” He tried so very hard to keep the delight out of his voice, but it was nigh impossible. His hands became businesslike, undoing the rest of his buttons and shrugging his shirt off, to fold and lay aside. He pretended - pretended not to watch Victor, who was clearly trying not to be caught avidly watching him strip. “These?” Dorian hooked a thumb through the mess of silver chains at his throat, the question an excuse to make eye contact.

Victor nodded, cleared his throat, but his voice still came husky and nervous, “Yes.” And Dorian took his time fiddling with the clasps, so he could watch the doctor, watching him, shirtless in the low light, his interest all too plain to see in the line of his trousers.

“I’m sorry doctor, could you..?” He wasn’t sure why he expected his hands to be cold - perhaps something to do with his eyes. Victor fumbled the catch at his nape, breath close against his hot skin. “Thank you.” He was too near when he turned: Victor took a step backwards but his eyes didn’t leave Dorian’s. Dorian snaked the handful of chains onto the marble top of the nightstand, dropped his rings one by one on top. His hands went to his trouser buttons and Victor averted his eyes. “Excuse me,” Dorian said, quietly. He turned away, slowly unfastening, watching in the dark mirror on the opposite wall just how Victor watched him hungrily, gaze raking his back, moving lower as he dropped his trousers, bent to pull them off, stayed perhaps a little longer than necessary in that position -

He heard a noise behind him and stood, covering himself with his hands in what he assumed was the appropriate mock modesty for their game. When he turned to look, Victor had his bag open and was looking for something. Time to hide that smile again; Dorian had a sudden and vivid recollection of his tryst with Vanessa and restrained himself from pushing against his own cupped hands. And Victor stood, holding something that Dorian couldn’t see, but rather hoped was a blade. He seemed a little more confident now, with Dorian nude before him, as if newly determined to go through with the act he’d set in motion. His eyes no longer averted, he appraised him with his direct blue stare in such a way that it wasn’t such a stretch of acting for Dorian to meekly lower his head so that his hair partially covered his face. Victor said, “Please lie down on the bed,” and he complied. “Hands by your sides please, Mr Gray.” His breathing was getting harsher, excited, the noise of it thrilling to Dorian, who moved his hands to his sides, placed them flat on the mattress, exposing himself fully. He couldn’t help it, he had to move: the counterpane was too soft against his back, the room too dark and close, the proximity of this man too stimulating; he rolled his hips, raising them until he felt the touch of the tip of his cock against his own belly. He was wet, he could feel it, the tight pulse of arousal almost unbearable. “Keep still,” Victor said. Dorian felt the gauze-light touch of fingertips from his knee to his chest, unbearably skirting his cock. He leaned over him, and a syringe appeared in Dorian’s field of vision.

“What's that?”

“Morphine.”

Dorian allowed himself a smile. _At least he would last a little while, then._ “Of course, doctor. Save enough for yourself.”

The prick and sting in the crook of his elbow subdued his raging body just enough. Every touch felt exquisite; Victor smoothed back his hair, ran the back of one hand down his cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For this. For giving yourself to me. For letting me give you that which you long for.”

Dorian smiled again, tried to raise a hand to drag this maddening man to him, but he was too drowsy. It didn’t matter. It was pleasant. His cock still throbbed, despite the morphine, and the thought of Victor seeing him like this - having him helpless - sent a new surge of want through him.

“You can have anything. You just have to say it.”

“I want…”

His voice buzzed, a mere whisper. “Yes?”

The hands moved, stroking, down his throat, across his smooth chest, circling his nipples, outlining his ribs. “I want your heart.”

Dorian chuckled, softly. “Dear Victor, I assure you, my body is a far more worthy prize.”

“Not to me.”

“Romantic boy. You read too much poetry. Did you know I knew that?” The morphine was loosening his tongue, the caresses to his chest that he wanted to urge lower were relaxing him too much, making him sleepy, the world dark at the edges.

Victor said, “I knew.” He said, “Vanessa told me lots of things.”

“Then she should have warned you about falling in love with me.”

The black waters of unconsciousness were closing over him, useless to resist as a current in a deep river. His eyes slipped shut, his body numbing. Victor’s voice, above him, said, “I did not mention love.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, we hope you're enjoying it so far! More very soon.


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